The Wolves of Midwinter (17 page)

“So Laura cannot conceive with you,” Jim said.

“Well, she will be able to soon. She’s becoming one of us. Look, Jim, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought all this to you, because there isn’t anything you can do to help me, except keep my secrets, and keep on being my brother.”

“Laura made this decision? On her own?”

“Of course she did. Jim, look at what the Chrism offers. We don’t age. We’re invulnerable to disease or degeneration. We can be killed,
yes, but most injuries don’t affect us at all. Barring accidents and mishaps, we can live forever. You can’t guess the age of Margon, or Sergei, or any of the others. You know what I’m talking about. You know Felix. You’ve spent hours talking to these men. Did you think Laura would turn down everlasting life? Who has the strength to do that?”

Silence. The obvious question was, would Jim turn it down if it was offered to him, but Reuben was not going to go there.

His brother seemed dazed, crestfallen.

“Look, I want some time with my little boy,” said Reuben. “A few years, anyway. And maybe after that he’ll go to school in San Francisco and live with Mom and Dad, or maybe he’ll go to some school in England or Switzerland. You and I never wanted that, but we could have had it. And my little boy can have it. I’ll protect him from what I am. Parents always try to protect their kids from … something, from many things.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Jim murmured. “How could I not understand? I figure my son, he’d be what, twelve years old now, don’t know …”

Jim looked tired, and old, but he didn’t look defeated. His Roman collar and black clerics seemed a form of armor as they always had. Reuben tried to put himself in Jim’s place. But it just didn’t work. And the story about Lorraine and the baby only made him ache for Jim’s well-being all the more.

How different this was from that night when in lupine form Reuben had entered the Confessional at St. Francis Church so desperately needing Jim in his pain and confusion. Now he only wanted to protect Jim from all this and he didn’t know how to do it. He wanted to tell him about Marchent’s ghost, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t add to the burden he’d already placed on Jim.

When Jim rose to leave, Reuben didn’t stop him. He was startled when Jim came towards him and kissed him on the forehead. Jim murmured something softly, something about love, and then he left the room, closing the door behind him.

Reuben sat there quietly for a long time. He was fighting the need to cry. He wished he was at Nideck Point. And a crowd of worries
descended on him: What if Celeste did abort the child? And how in the hell was Phil going to live under this roof with Celeste here, Celeste who couldn’t conceal her perfect disdain for him? Hell, this was his father’s house, wasn’t it? Reuben had to support his father. He had to call, to visit, to spend time with Phil. If only the guesthouse at Nideck Point was finished! As soon as it was, he would call his father and urge him to come up for an indefinite stay. He had to find some way to show Phil how much he loved him and always had.

Finally he lay down and fell asleep, exhausted by the twists and turns of the races he was running in his mind, and only now did the submerged images of Nideck Point rise; only now did he hear Felix’s reassuring voice, and reflect in that half world before sleep and dream that his time in this house was really over, and the future held bright and beautiful things. And maybe it would be that way for Celeste, too. Maybe she’d be happy.

The wedding was scheduled for eleven in the judge’s chambers. Laura was waiting under the rotunda at City Hall when they came in. She at once kissed Celeste and told her that she looked good. Celeste warmed to her and told her she was glad to see her again, all this a bit breezy and predictable and ridiculous, Reuben thought.

They went immediately to the judge’s chambers, and within five minutes it was finished. The whole affair was cheerless, and rather grim as far as Reuben was concerned, and Celeste ignored him as if he didn’t exist even when she said, “I do.” Jim stood in the corner of the room with his arms folded and his eyes down.

They were almost to the front doors of the building when Celeste announced that she had something to say, and asked that they all step to one side.

“I’m sorry for all I said yesterday,” she said. Her voice was flat and unfeeling. “You were right. None of this is your fault, Reuben. It’s my fault. And I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about what I said to Phil. I never should have gone off on Phil like that.”

Reuben smiled and nodded gratefully, and once again, as he’d done last night, he kissed her on the cheek.

Laura was visibly confused and a little anxious, glancing from one
of them to the other. But Grace and Phil were remarkably calm, as if they’d had some warning that this was coming.

“We all understand,” said Grace. “You’re carrying a child and your nerves are on edge. And everyone knows this. Reuben knows this.”

“Anything I can do to make this easier, I’ll do it,” said Reuben. “You want me in the delivery room? I’ll be there.”

“Oh, don’t be so damned obsequious,” Celeste responded sharply. “I’m not capable of aborting a baby just because it’s inconvenient. Nobody has to pay me to have a baby. If I could abort a baby, the baby would be gone by now.”

Jim came forward at once and put his right arm around Celeste. He clasped Grace’s hand with his left hand. “St. Augustine wrote something once, something I think about often,” he said. “ ‘God triumphs on the ruins of our plans.’ And maybe that is what is happening here. We make blunders, we make mistakes, and somehow new doors open, new possibilities arise, opportunities of which we’ve never dreamed. Let’s trust that that is what is happening here for each of us.”

Celeste kissed Jim quickly, and then embraced him and laid her head against his chest.

“We’re with you every step of the way, darling,” Jim said. He stood there like an oak. “All of us.”

It was a masterly performance, done with conviction, thought Reuben. It was plainly obvious to him that Jim loathed Celeste. But then again, maybe Jim was simply loving her, really loving her as he tried to love everybody. What do I know, Reuben thought.

Without another word, the little gathering broke up, Grace and Phil ushering Celeste away, Jim to go off back to St. Francis Church, and Reuben to take Laura to lunch.

When they sat down in the dim interior of the Italian restaurant, they finally spoke, and Reuben told Laura briefly and in a spiritless voice about what had happened last night and how he’d hurt Celeste. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said, suddenly crestfallen. “But I just, I had to say something. I tell you I think being hated is painful, but being deeply disliked is even more painful, and that’s what I feel coming from her. Intense dislike. And it’s like a flame. And I’ve always felt
it when I was with her, and it’s made my soul wither. I know this now because I dislike her. And God help me, maybe I always did and I’m as guilty of dishonesty as she is.”

What he wanted to talk about was Marchent. He needed to talk about Marchent. He wanted to be back in the world of Nideck Point, but he was caught here, out of his element, in his old world, and was eager to escape all of it.

“Reuben, Celeste never loved you,” said Laura. “She went out with you for two reasons—your family and your money. She loved both and she couldn’t admit it.”

Reuben didn’t answer. The truth was he couldn’t believe Celeste capable of such a thing.

“I understood it as soon as I spent time with her,” said Laura. “She was intimidated by you, by your education, your travel, your way with words, your polish. She wanted all those things for herself, and she was burning with guilt, burning. It came out in her sarcasm, her constant digs—the way she kept on even when you were no longer engaged, the way she just couldn’t let it go. She never loved you. And now, don’t you see, she’s pregnant and she hates it but she’s living in your parents’ beautiful home, and she’s taking money for the child, lots of money, I suspect, and she’s ashamed and she can hardly stand it.”

That
did
make sense. In fact, that quite suddenly made perfect sense, and it seemed a light had flared in his mind by which he could read his strange past with Celeste clearly for the first time.

“It’s probably like a nightmare for her,” said Laura. “Reuben, money confuses people. It does. That’s a fact of life. It confuses people. Your family has plenty. They don’t act like they do. Your mom works all the time, like a driven self-made woman, your father is an idealist and a poet who wears clothes he bought twenty years ago, and Jim comes off the same way, otherworldly, spiritual, driving himself to minister to others so that he’s perpetually exhausted. Your dad’s always struggling with his old work, or taking notes in a book as if he had to give a lecture in the morning. Your mother rarely gets a good night’s sleep. And you come across a bit that way too, working night and day on your essays for Billie at the paper, pounding away on the computer till
you practically fall asleep over it. But you do have money, and really no idea what it’s like to be without it.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“Look, she didn’t plan it. She just didn’t know what she was doing. But why did you ever listen to her, that’s what I’ve always wondered?”

That rang a bell with him. Marchent had said something so very similar to him but now the words escaped him—something about the mystery being that he listened to those who criticized him and cut him down. And his family certainly did a lot of that and had done a lot of that before Celeste ever joined the chorus. Maybe they’d unwittingly invited Celeste to join the chorus. Maybe that had been her ticket in, though he and Celeste had never realized it. Once she’d taken up the relentless scrutiny of Sunshine Boy, Baby Boy, Little Boy—well, it was established that she spoke the common language. Maybe he’d felt comfortable with her for speaking that common language.

“In the beginning, I liked her a lot,” he said in a small voice. “I had fun with her. I thought she was pretty. I liked that she was a smart. I like smart women. I liked being around her and then things started to go wrong. I should have spoken up. I should have told her how uncomfortable I was.”

“And you would have in time,” said Laura. “It would have ended in some completely natural and inevitable way, if you had never gone to Nideck Point. It
had
ended in a natural way. Except now there’s the baby.”

He didn’t answer.

The restaurant was becoming crowded, but they sat in a little zone of privacy at their corner table, the lights dim, and the heavy draperies and framed pictures around them absorbing the noise.

“Is it so difficult for someone to love me?” he asked.

“You know it’s not,” she said smiling. “You’re easy to love, so easy that just about everybody who meets you loves you. Felix adores you. Thibault loves you. They all love you. Even Stuart loves you! And Stuart’s a kid who’s supposed to be in love with himself at his age. You’re a nice guy, Reuben. You’re a nice and gentle guy. And I’ll tell you something else. You have a kind of humility, Reuben. And some
people just don’t understand humility. You have a way of opening yourself to what interests you, opening yourself to other people, like Felix, for instance, in order to learn from them. You can sit at the table at Nideck Point and listen calmly to all the elders of the Morphenkinder tribe with amazing humility. Stuart can’t do it. Stuart has to flex his muscles, challenge, tease, provoke. But you just keep on learning. Unfortunately some people think that’s weakness.”

“That’s too generous an assessment, Laura,” he said. He smiled. “But I like the way you see things.”

Laura sighed. “Reuben, Celeste is not really part of you now. She can’t be.” Laura frowned, her mouth twisting a little as though she found this particularly painful to say, and then she went on in a low voice. “She’ll live and die like other human beings. Her road will always be hard. She’ll soon discover how little money will change it for her. You can afford to forgive her all this, can’t you?”

He stared into Laura’s soft blue eyes.

“Please?” she said. “She’ll never know for one moment the kind of life that’s opening now for both of us.”

He knew what these words meant grammatically, intelligently, but he didn’t know what they meant emotionally. But he did know what he had to do.

He picked up his phone, and he texted Celeste. He wrote in full and complete words, “I’m sorry. Truly I am. I want you to be happy. When this is all over, I want you to be happy.”

What a cowardly thing to do, to tap it into his iPhone when he couldn’t say it to her in person.

But in a moment, she’d answered. The words appeared: “You’ll always be my Sunshine Boy.”

He stared at the iPhone stonily and then he deleted the message.

They left San Francisco by three thirty, easily beating the evening traffic.

But it was slow go in the rain, and Reuben didn’t reach Nideck point till after ten.

Once again, the cheerful Christmas lights of the house immediately comforted him. Every window on the three-story façade was
now neatly etched with the lights, and the terrace was in good order. The tents were folded and to one side at the ocean end. And a large, well-built stable had taken shape around the Holy Family. The statues themselves had been hastily arranged under it, and though there was no hay or greenery yet, the beauty of the statues was impressive. They appeared stoical and gracious as they stood there under the shadowy wooden roof, faces glinting with the lights from the house, the cold darkness hovering around them. Reuben had some hint of how wonderful the Christmas party was going to be.

His biggest shock came, however, when he looked to the right of the house, as he faced it, and saw the myriad twinkling lights that had transformed the oak forest.

“Winterfest!” he whispered.

If it hadn’t been so wet and cold, he would have gone walking there. He couldn’t wait to do that, walk there. He wandered around the right side of the house, his feet crunching in the gravel of the drive, and saw that wood-chip mulch had been spread out thickly under the trees, and the festooned lights and the softly illuminated mulch paths went on seemingly forever.